Chapter 184

Jaime Lannister’s gaze drifted across the field not far away. He looked upon the infernal ruin beneath the walls of Riverrun—smoke, broken masonry, discarded armour, incomplete corpses… and could not help asking himself: Did I do this?

He remembered the morning he had first been made a knight. Dawn had come while he still knelt; his knees were already raw and bleeding.

“To shed blood is a knight’s proper duty, Jaime,” Ser Arthur Dayne had told him. “Remember—we keep our vows with blood.”